ground. You wowd have had to interpret hallowed ground as beginning above the subway lines-hallowed ground with the busde of a major urban transit node underneath it. T he World Trade Center was con- ceived by David Rockefeller, the chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank, and his brother Nelson, the governor of New York Businesses had been moving out of the historic financial district for some time, because midtown was more convenient and livelier. David Rocke- feller first tried to stem the move north by building a new headquarters for his bank on Pine Street: an eight-hundred-foot- high glass-and-aluminum tower de- signed by the architect Gordon Bun- shaft of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, which was completed in 1960. Then Rockefeller and the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Association, the areàs busi- ness group, asked Skidmore to prepare a broader plan for lower Manhattan. They dusted off an idea that had been pro- posed in the late nineteen-forties and rejected for lack of demand: a complex of buildings on the East River, just south of the Brooklyn Bridge, that would house businesses involved in interna- tional trade The Rockefeller brothers asked the Port Authority, which combines the qualities of a private corporation with the powers of a government agency; to handle the construction of the new complex. The Port Authori1:)r, which was created in 1921, was commissioned to build a rail tunnel under New York Har- bor, connecting New Jersey to the Brook- lyn piers. The runnel never got built, but the Port Authority ended up running the Holland Tunnel, the Lincoln Tun- nel, the George Washington Bridge, several bridges on Staten Island, and all three New York airports. The Port Au- thority was experienced at building and managing things, its profitable enter- prises gave it plenty of money; and it had the power to condemn property through eminent domain. It cowd also issue bonds on its own, so the cost of the Trade Center wowd not have to be ap- plied to the New York State budget. But there was a complication. Since control of the Port Authority was shared by New York and New Jersey; either state's governor cowd veto a project. Robert o o o o o o L "1 want the whole package-the llttle bow the colored pebbles, the plastic castle. " . Meyner, the governor of New Jersey; was not inclined to endorse a huge project for lower Manhattan without some ben- efit for New Jersey; and he suggested that the Port Authority take over the nearly bankrupt Hudson & Manhattan Rail- road, a dreary, ratdetrap commuter line that ran under the Hudson River. If the Port Authority bailed out the railroad, New Jersey wouldn't have to. The Port Authority agreed to this, and the rail- road was renamed Port Authority Trans- Hudson, or PATH. As part of the deal, the Port Author- ity also became the owner of a pair of office buildings on Church Street that had been erected in 1908 over the rail- road's Manhattan terminus. The build- ings needed millions of dollars' worth of renovations, and the agency decided to tear them down. Someone got the idea of putting the Trade Center there, instead of on the East River, and nei- ther Rockefeller objected. The location of the World Trade Center was deter- mined not by any kind of master plan, or by any planners at all. It was the reswt of a political deal to bail out a railroad. Austin Tobin, the head of the Port Authori1:)r, eventually took over the whole project. He wanted his own architect, and he hired Yamasaki. Tobin decided that there showd be ten million square . feet of office space, about five times as much as the Empire State Building. Thus the original idea of the project, re- vitalizing lower Manhattan, got lost. The trade center did nothing to solve the areàs problems, which were a lack of easy access from most of the region and a lack of housing and cwtural amenities. And it increased the supply of the one thing the area had too much of already, which was office space. 'When Yamasaki concluded that the best way to create all the office space Tobin wanted was to erect a pair of towers that would be the world's tallest buildings, Tobin said that was precisely what he had been hoping for. Public-works czars like Tobin-he is less famous than Robert Moses, but, un- like Moses, he ahnost always got his way--are generally understood to be in short supply these days. It is inconceivable that a handful of politicians and bankers cowd make a deal to start one of the world's largest construction projects in the middle of New York City now, the way the Rockefellers launched the World Trade Center in the early nineteen-sixties. Austin Tobin was able to decide, pretty much on ills own, that the center showd take the form of the tallest skyscrapers ever built, and he carried out his plan unburdened by lawsuits, environmental- THE NEW YORKER., MAY 20, 2002 89